Bonsai Forum

TOPIC: Hong Kong orchid and baobab

In the window with all the other inside trees I have a Hong Kong orchid and a baobab, both of which did just fine all summer outdoors but now are suffering from some kind of bugs. There are no webs, so they aren't spider mites, but there are little white dots smaller that a grain of salt, mostly on the under sides of the leaves. Every day or so there are lots of little black dots over the Hong Kong orchid buds and now on the new leaves on the baobab. I spray but they seem to come back. Am I missing the gestation cycle? It won't be time to move them outside for maybe two months, so I need to do something now.

First thing to do is find out what you have on your plant. As my crystal ball is out of order at the moment, I have a hard time seeing. So you will have to look at the "white dots" and decide what you have. An option is thrips.But without a picture.. I cannot see anyting.

The pictures in Wikipedia on thrips look just like what I see. It is hazy about cycle time, but I will guess to spray twice a week.

The baobab has lost its leaves so it may be a while to get pictures. They have just started to come out.
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One additional symptom is that the HK orchid develops little clear balls of sticky stuff which I guess is sap oozing out of bites.